We started with me teaching her Lord of the Rings - The Confrontation. The basic rules are quite simple (movement, combat, victory conditions, special movement cases), so we were underway quite quickly. The real challenge in learning this game comes from the need to consider the many possible interactions of characters and cards (some of which aren't even properly clarified in the rulebook, hence I keep the six page FAQ with my copy of the game).
Anyway, I played the Good guys, with Fee the forces of Evil. As this was Fiona's first game, and my first game for ages, we tended towards the obvious moves, rather than cunning bluffs. So I ran around killing stuff with Gandalf, until he was taken out by the Orcs, Fee put the Balrog in Moria etc. My early Gandalf rampage and some good card choices have given me a good advantage, and it looks like Frodo can march unnoposed into Mordor, but I'd forgotten about the Flying Nazgul, who kills him. If I'd remember Fee had earlier revealed the Nazgul, I could have killed it by recasting Heroic Sacrifice with the Magic card.
So Fiona won, and seemed to think the game was okay. It's difficult to be anymore enthusiastic than that after just one game. Maybe it'll grow on her, maybe not. It might be slightly too analytical, although the unknown factors mean you can overthink things - a couple of times I made the mistake of assuming Fiona might work out was I trying to do and react opposing, but she didn't so I ended up trapping myself. Don't overthink this game against beginners!
After LotR we just play San Juan (of course). I can't remember the specifics of the four games, but two were blowouts, and two were actually very close, and I wasn't sure who was going to win, though I both edged them both by a few points. The large victories tend to come when I get a better start than Fiona, cause I'm utterly ruthless about not letting her back into the game, and will often rush out to 12 buildings very quickly for the win (such as one game this evening were my first two builds were Carpenter and Quarry).
The games were generally quite varied - I even won one game by building Well (which is actually an okay building) and both Trading Post and Market Stand (which are usually rubbish), all of which were useful. I guess most buildings do have their uses (particularly in two-player, which lets you try plans that would be unfeasable against more than one opponent). I won one of the games using Tower very effectively, and in another I had an okay Black Market (I found Aquaduct, but had trouble finding Indigo), and a useful Chapel. I've still never needed to build an Archive though, other than as a very cheap violet when Gold Mine wasn't available. It remains the black sheep of the San Juan family.
After four games we decided to call it a night. I suspect if I didn't have a girlfriend at home expecting me we could have kept playing San Juan all night. I haven't done that since playing Magic The Gathering all night at Cambridge. Two player San Juan is really that good!!!P.S. The first draft of this post contained what could be considered a very revealing Freudian slip :)
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